"One is surprised," continues Warton, "that Milton should have delighted in romances: the images of feudal and royal life which those books afford, agreed not at all with his system. A passage should here be cited from our author's Apology for Smectymnus :'-'I may tell you whither my younger feet wandered: I betook me among those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood,' &c. The extraordinary and most imaginative, but inconsistent poet, exclaims, line 155,

But let my due feet never fail

To walk the studious cloisters pale, &c.

Being educated at St. Paul's school, contiguous to the church, he thus became impressed with an early reverence for the solemnities of the ancient ecclesiastical architecture, its vaults, shrines, ailes, pillars, and painted glass, rendered yet more awful by the accompaniment of the choral service."

It is unnecessary to copy the opinion which Johnson gives of L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso,' because it is in every one's hands. Johnson yet allows that "they are two noble efforts of imagination."-They would be noble for a common poet; but not comparatively for Milton: I cannot allow them that high invention which belongs to the bard of Paradise Lost.' Warton criticises Johnson's comment with a just severity:-"Never," says he, "were fine imagery and fine imagination so marred, mutilated, and impoverished by a cold, unfeeling, and imperfect representation.'

6

"No part of L'Allegro,'" says Johnson, "is made to arise from the pleasures of the bottle.” What sad vulgarity! Who could suspect that Milton would write a Bacchanalian song?

It seems to me that these two poems are much more valuable for their development of Milton's studies and amusements, than for their poetry, by proving his love of nature,-of books,-of solitude, of contemplation,―of all that is beautiful, and all that is romantic,-than for those bold figures, and that glorious fiction, which were his power and his chief delight. Observation and an accurate copy of the external appearances of nature do not make the highest poetry: to copy always restrains the imagination.

When we make things after our own fashion, we have the ascendency over them: it is better to deal with the invisible world than with the visible; but we ought to associate them together: mere description is always imperfect: all the grandeur of natural scenery will not avail, unless by its tendency to operate on the human mind. This is the spell of Gray's poetry: this makes the charm of Collins' Ode to Evening: this is the magic of the poetical part of Cowley's Essays:' all those parts of Shakspeare's dramas which break into pure poetry, are of this cast. It is a charm, which, to my apprehension, was scarce ever reached by Dryden or Pope: Byron repeatedly reached it; sometimes he was extravagant: Wordsworth absolutely deals in it. All impression on the mind is nothing, unless the mind throws back its own colours upon it.

6

All the labour and all the art in the world will do nothing for poetry: they may draw copiously and freely from a cistern which they have previously filled with borrowed water; but the water will be stale, vapid, and good for nothing.

I have said the more on these two lyrics of Milton, because they are so much more universal favourites than some of his diviner compositions. The greater part of the images are within every one's observance; but this is not, I think, a high merit the poet's eyes should "give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." Here the images, for the most part, are such as actually exist bodily the touches upon their most picturesque features are, indeed, exquisite; and here and there are passages of aërial music unknown to common ears: but then the want of dignity, of the "long-resounding pace" in the versification, lessens the magic. The whole is written lightly, and upon the surface: the poet skims away, just touches with his wings, and goes on : he does not here rise in slow and majestic dignity to the sun; hovering sometimes on his mighty pinions, and seeming to hang over the earth, as if his eye was penetrating into its depths; and then, as if with an angel's power, again darting into the upper regions of the sky.

I can scarcely suppose that these two pieces cost Milton any labour, or time, or strong exercise of mind each of them might easily have been produced by him in a few hours: but there is an abstraction of mind, a visionary enthusiasm, which requires a very different sort of nursing:

in that state Milton must have been in his sublimer compositions. Here he deals with nothing difficult, nor enters into the mysteries of the soul.

If I say that there is not much sentiment in these descriptions, I shall probably be answered, that the images are selected by sentiment, and so arranged as to produce a particular tone of senti ment. If it be so, the sentiment is not brought out; and the poet ought not to trust to others to bring out that which he ought to express himself. It will not be pretended that there is any moral pathos here; and moral pathos is assuredly one of the finest spells of poetry. Pathos cannot be produced by a writer who has not a visionary presence of the objects which produce it: but it were better to give more of the pathos, and less of the objects.

This faculty, indeed, was not Milton's chief excellence now and then he is pathetic in 'Paradise Lost,' but he has none of Shakspeare's human pathos he was too stern and heroic for tears.

It is rarely that I get into a different track of criticism from Warton; but Warton was perhaps too exclusively fond of imagery and descriptions, and therefore has estimated the poems, of which I am now speaking, higher than I do. Warton also wanted pathos, but he was not without a gentle and kindly sentiment.

These descriptive poems had long fallen into oblivion, when, about 1740, they were revived by the Wartons, who formed a school upon them. Like all schools, when they once took up the

thing, they carried it too far: but Collins, in his Ode to Evening,' stopped precisely at the true point: Gray caught some of the infusion; and I suspect, that in two or three images or epithets, he was indebted to Collins; but did not owe his tone to the Warton school, being rather their senior, and drinking from the original fountains, not only of Milton, but still more of the Italians, as well as of the classics. Altogether, the cast and combination of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard' is his own, though he may have borrowed particular ingredients. His is a perfect model, sui generis. Joseph Warton's 'Ode to Fancy' is an attempted echo of L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso,' indeed, almost a cento.